Output Stream of Consciousness

Link: http://www.wacom.com/graphire/4x5.cfm

Okay, it's a piece of hardware, but in many ways, it is totally a toy. Running around Christmas shopping, it can be utterly tempting to give yourself a Christmas present. Well, I succumbed :)

I picked up a Wacom Graphire[4] Graphics Tablet. I've always been frustrated with the ever-present mouse when it comes to doodling and the like on computers. I just can't get mice to work for painting.

So what do you get?

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We didn't get a honeymoon after our wedding - being in the middle of a teaching year. We got a little getaway at the Sheraton Cavalier right after the wedding, spoiling ourselves with a giant jacuzzi bath and the like for two days. We need a real honeymoon, though. We plan to have children relatively soon, so a 'big blowout' before this event sounds absolutely fantastic.

There are so many places we could go. We could go back to Europe, we could go to the orient (Dena taught in South Korea and I went on a student exchange to China once upon a time), but what has been really drawing us is Africa.

There are two things we're looking for in addition to the regular safari experience. We are looking to see gorillas, and we're looking to see Zanzibar. One outfit that looks interesting and still affordable is Kumuka. A coworker of mine did a Europe and Egypt tour through them and really enjoyed himself. The ultimate tour that's drawing us is this one - 35 freaking days. I, uh, have a lot of holidays built up :) Might be cutting things close with travel time, though, so we may have to check out other options.

I'll have to start brushing up on my Swahili. I only remember how to say "hello" (Jambo), "thanks" (Tafadhali) and "I have eaten all your children at home" (Mekula watoto wote nyumbani).

Comment by Adam:

Go for the 35 day tour. It may be the most enjoyable $3000US you get to spend in a very long time. If you do, I'll be most envious. Hmm, maybe I'll mortgage my house again and join you... :)

Comment by Ritchie:

That's $3000 EACH, and it doesn't include airfare, but it could still be a vacation we truly owe ourselves. I think it's about $2800 for two people round trip to Nairobi as well. Could get a car instead. But we'll likely not be able to do something like this ever again.

I'm got an East Africa guide from Lonely Planet. I think I'll check out the outfits there as well, though it's hard to see how the safaris can get a lot cheaper than that based on what I've seen so far. You never know, though. I think even Kumuka is based in the UK, so they have that bit of overhead. Another interesting UK outfit is Dragoman Overland (http://www.dragoman.com/search/tripresults.php?where=G&start=10)... they're the one that has things like the half-YEAR trips.

We'll see :)

Okay, this is going to be controversial.

I don't know what sort of disclaimer I can offer other than to say this is about me. They're my views, and even if you disagree vehemently with them, you may be able to see, at least, where they come from.

Diving in...

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I'm a science fiction afficionado of sorts, but I must say, my collection is not that big. Out of the reams of books on shelves, it can take a considerable while to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Also, good fiction keeps me awake until dawn reading it, which is not always good!

I usually go with authors I have read previously, like Vernor Vinge or Robert Charles Wilson, but my favourite authors only write so fast.

So I took my birthday present gift card from Dena and spent some time looking at the summaries and flipping through pages to get a sense of author's styles. Julie E. Czerneda's "Survival" was one of the two I chose. I was very pleasantly surprised.

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We added to our menagerie this weekend with a pair of button quails. We've been enamoured of these little critters for probably a couple of years. I've only ever seen them at Pisces Pet Emporium in town (they have some great store pets as well, including marmosets and goodly-sized koi, and they're a great source for different aquarium plants).

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Link: http://ps2.ign.com/objects/746/746768.html

The accusation always goes that computers and video games make you gain weight because you're sitting on your duff instead of getting some exercise. That's not without some truth to it. Heck, I can feel it even just blogging here

That said, there are a few games that totally and utterly break this trend. The "Dance Dance Revolution" series certainly cannot be labelled as a "sit on your butt" game (unless you have an extraordinarily talented butt, which you might).

This is one of the latest in a line of home versions of the arcade dancing games, where you have to hit the arrows with your feet at the right time. Now you could theoretically use a regular controller for this, but it's just not the same without laying out the $20 (or maybe a little more, but you can get them for $20 easy) for a dance mat controller.

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The Hubble plus really good researchers just keeps on coming up with surprises. It's been ages since I've kept up with Pluto. Last I left it, they had figured out that it had a pretty big-sized moon around it, Charon. I didn't even know that it had a confirmed atmosphere, however thin. Now this poor rock who people have been trying to take "planet" status away from has two new moons. Who knew?

The outer solar system is shaping up pretty interestingly. One thing that seems a little strange so far is that there is still no sign of an Oort cloud, which was hypothesized as being where long-period comets with odd orbits, like Halley's comet. Everything past Pluto has so far been in pretty much the same angle of orbit as the rest of the planets. How long before we can prove or disprove the existence of the Oort cloud?

Have you ever wondered where forces in nature come from?

In mainstream physics, the theory goes that forces happen because matter exchanges little particles between them. Now, these are no ordinary particles, these are virtual particles. They 'borrow' energy from space, exist for a while, and then give it back.

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I've always had an interest in spoken languages. We boarded foreign students to help make ends meet once upon a very long time ago, so I got exposed to quite a few people whose first language was not English. I thought it was the most fascinating thing ever. My maternal grandpa, bless his heart, gave me two phrase books for my ninth birthday, Collins German and Collins Spanish.

That said, I can't really claim fluency in any of the languages I've studied, really. I've got enough of a lot of different languages to know the alphabets, some fundamental grammar, and to know how they work. A lot of the pronunciation errors that people make in English can be directly traced back to pronunciation rules or lacks of particular combinations in peoples' native tongues. Sometimes you can use these to trace where someone comes from, even if just in general. Sometimes you can look for clues if you hear them speaking their native language.

Let me give you a few samplings...

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I'm always interested in things that go on south (or, perish the thought, north) of the border here, to see what the latest shenanigans of creationism, or its smartly-dressed, smooth-talking brother, Intelligent Design.

So, the goings-on in the case where the Dover, Pennsylvania school district decided to put Intelligent Design into the curriculum (causing some science teachers to ask that their names be withdrawn as authors of the rest of the curriculum that they designed), has me most intrigued.

When I'm up late at night, flipping through channels, I see the ads for the injury lawyers and the like, and I cringe. Judges seem like they might be a mixed bag. Reading the transcripts of trials like this, though, are a refreshing change from whatever conceptions and misconceptions I have about the professions. Seeing a lawyer in a transcript saying things to Michael Behe like, "And to say this very colloquially, you conclude that it will take a large population a long time to evolve a particular function at a disulfide bond, right?" is utterly surreal.

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Well, my coworker Robert actually went out and did it :)

I came back to work after my wedding to see two lava lamps on top of the filing cabinet outside our office.

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Link: http://www.namco.com/games/katamari_damacy/

A lot of people I know have encountered this before (to which I have to say, why didn't you tell me about it?), but our good friends Ennien and Robin showed this to us during one of our visits.

They gave us a pre-wedding gift of a Playstation along with this quirky, quirky game. It was mighty fine for stress relief. In the history of unique games, I would place this one right up there with Dungeon Keeper (where you get to be the bad guy defending your treasure against heroes) or Nomads (battling out between flying islands).

This game is weird, weird, weird, and I love it!

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Link: http://www.wandg.com/

My best man took me to see this movie on the day of the wedding. Ahhh, what a nerve-calmer :)

It's pretty good, and the story line with its twist is nifty, but it doesn't get truly funny until quite late in the movie. I still much prefer Aardman's "A Close Shave" for its pace and humour.

Still, I hope they make more. Making a feature-length claymation film is pretty impressive. Seeing it in the movie theater, you can see the fingerprints on Gromit pretty clearly.

(The business of censoring the poster on the Isle of Portland in the UK was quite bizarre as well.)

Wow, I am going to have a lot of updates to do here, especially to the wedding site, now that we've done the whole kitten kaboodle!

The wedding went great!

Some people told me in advance that things go much more quickly than you had imagined it would. I would not have believed that before. I do now.

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While I was ordering a couple of things from good ol' ThinkGeek, I decided to spoil myself a little bit with a silly toy. That toy was Frigits, which is essentially a little marble maze on magnets that you stick to the side of your fridge. You know, stainless steel refrigerators may look nice, but to deny yourself magnets and other toys... I just can't see them being worth it.

Anyhow, here's a picture...

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